If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

There is no rule on how to write.

Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.